New Season, has there been any change to dice in ranked games?

We’re working on implementing the dice feedback we’ve received. It’s still WIP. Stay tuned.

@juliusborisovbeamdog said in New Season, has there been any change to dice in ranked games?:

We’re working on implementing the dice feedback we’ve received. It’s still WIP. Stay tuned.

Is there actually something wrong with the dice though?

@brian-cannon those arent too bad, check this whole thread out

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/21731/hall-of-shame-tales-of-the-worst-dice-ever/115

those types of unlucky rolls just happen sometime, bomber hitting twice is a 1/36, which isnt that bad.

@brian-cannon said in New Season, has there been any change to dice in ranked games?:

Started a new game Pickpocket Corkscrew, I am Axis, round 1 Russian attack goes off as planned Ukraine is taken with one tank left, Battle for West Russia, Russian loses 4 infantry takes the territory, not terrible for me. Round 1 German purchase 11 infantry 2 arty, take back Ukraine, take Karelia with one Inf. Sea Zone 7 attack goes horribly I end up retreating with one fighter. Transjordan is taken without a loss. Destroyer and transport off Canada east coast is destroyed.

Round 1 British, Standard attack on German Med Battleship, 2 fighters and a bomber goes off beautifully for British player as it does always, curious if this is now scripted in the game. For third game in a row my battleship does not even record a defensive hit. British bomber lies in Egypt, I wonder if this time it will record two defensive hits like the last time. Screenshot below
https://imgur.com/a/aQf2K2m

Again the contrast I cant get a single hit with 2 subs, 2 fighters and a cruiser but an attack with a bomber and 2 fighters on a battleship goes off without a hitch…every single time…

The same people are at the top every season because they execute excellently and minimize risk. Jan, Quintin, Battousai, CND, Il_principino. I’ve played all of them and they execute excellently.

In contrast, my first 5-7 ranked games are the beginning of the season, players are doing all kinds of risky and suboptimal things. 90% of the time, I know I’ve won already by round 2 because they’ve made a purchase decision or movement that’s so outside of optimal such that luck doesn’t matter. What I do is gain a 10 income edge, avoid engaging in major battles and win over 15-20 rounds, minimizing risk by avoiding unnecessary battles and accumulating lots of units so that central limit theorem takes hold. 80 units pressuring 30 units in Moscow. Why take 99% odds when you have 99.999% odds in two rounds.

Specific examples:

1. don’t attack E Canada, send all 6 units to sz7. By sending 5, you’re turning a 99% battle into a 90% battle with variations in the 90% where Germany loses a fighter.

2. Pearl is a risky battle. If you want to minimize risk, stop attacking it as Japan. I have.

3. Stack 5 fighters in reach of UK sea zone and surviving units in sz7 makes it difficult to create a navy. UK will feel strong pressure to use the bomber to trade sz7 instead of attempting to hit Germany’s med fleet round 1. Sounds like UK gets to hit med fleet for free in your games since Germany takes unnecessary risks in SZ7.

4. Germany’s med fleet is expendable. Treat it as dead, and a bonus if it survives round 1. It’s just like the Japan transport in sz61, bomber in Ukraine.

I’m happy to play a casual game with you and provide feedback. Boston_NWO#4108

@marineiguana said in New Season, has there been any change to dice in ranked games?:

Specific examples:

1. don’t attack E Canada, send all 6 units to sz7. By sending 5, you’re turning a 99% battle into a 90% battle with variations in the 90% where Germany loses a fighter.

2. Pearl is a risky battle. If you want to minimize risk, stop attacking it as Japan. I have.

3. Stack 5 fighters in reach of UK sea zone and surviving units in sz7 makes it difficult to create a navy. UK will feel strong pressure to use the bomber to trade sz7 instead of attempting to hit Germany’s med fleet round 1. Sounds like UK gets to hit med fleet for free in your games since Germany takes unnecessary risks in SZ7.

4. Germany’s med fleet is expendable. Treat it as dead, and a bonus if it survives round 1. It’s just like the Japan transport in sz61, bomber in Ukraine.

I agree with #3 and #4, but not #1 and #2.

Destroying the British dest in SZ10 is a 50/50 battle (with the potential to destroy an extra 7ipc), and if you fight this battle prior to the sz7 battle, it can help you keep subs alive (by selecting the cruiser prior to the subs as casualties), making it very hard for UK to build any fleet on turn 1. Against highly skilled players (which I know you are), I’ll take the risk with slightly worse odds if they are still favourable and have potentially high rewards.

Pearl is a risky battle, but again, with high rewards. I think sending 5 units there and making sure you select your fighter that is out of fuel as 1st casualty is key. You don’t want to have to bring your AC there.

Cheers.

@brian-cannon Yes. I feel it should be done, unless there are juicier targets out there (Chinese fighter undefended, UK fleet spread out, etc)

@marineiguana said in New Season, has there been any change to dice in ranked games?:

I’m happy to play a casual game with you and provide feedback. Boston_NWO#4108

Always nice to see players willing to put time in.

@marineiguana said in New Season, has there been any change to dice in ranked games?:

The same people are at the top every season because they execute excellently and minimize risk. Jan, Quintin, Battousai, CND, Il_principino. I’ve played all of them and they execute excellently.

It’s not just about execution and risk management. The ranked system rewards grinding. I really don’t feel it’s appropriate to even call it an Elo-based system with rank degradation over time, never mind twenty-four hour limits.

If you have two players with equal skill, but one of them can make the regular 24-hour checkins every day over a few months and another can’t, the rankings are going to reflect that.

So I’d say perhaps it’s that there’s just a few players that meet some level of competency that can also grind consistently. But even if that’s true, that separate to the question of whether any players are using dice exploits or not.

@marineiguana said in New Season, has there been any change to dice in ranked games?:

Specific examples:

1. don’t attack E Canada, send all 6 units to sz7. By sending 5, you’re turning a 99% battle into a 90% battle with variations in the 90% where Germany loses a fighter.

2. Pearl is a risky battle. If you want to minimize risk, stop attacking it as Japan. I have.

3. Stack 5 fighters in reach of UK sea zone and surviving units in sz7 makes it difficult to create a navy. UK will feel strong pressure to use the bomber to trade sz7 instead of attempting to hit Germany’s med fleet round 1. Sounds like UK gets to hit med fleet for free in your games since Germany takes unnecessary risks in SZ7.

4. Germany’s med fleet is expendable. Treat it as dead, and a bonus if it survives round 1. It’s just like the Japan transport in sz61, bomber in Ukraine.

I understand your intent was to provide examples, not discuss the particular merits. But your point was to eliminate “unnecessary” risk - what is “unnecessary”? How is it defined?

I feel I’ve been through this particular example before, but that’s all right.

“don’t attack E Canada, send all 6 units to sz7. By sending 5, you’re turning a 99% battle into a 90% battle with variations in the 90% where Germany loses a fighter.”

“Stack 5 fighters in reach of UK sea zone and surviving units in sz7 makes it difficult to create a navy. UK will feel strong pressure to use the bomber to trade sz7 instead of attempting to hit Germany’s med fleet round 1. Sounds like UK gets to hit med fleet for free in your games since Germany takes unnecessary risks in SZ7.”

http://calc.axisandallies.org/?mustland=0&abortratio=0&saveunits=0&strafeunits=0&aInf=&aArt=&aArm=&aFig=2&aBom=&aTra=&aSub=3&aDes=&aCru=1&aCar=&aBat=&adBat=&dInf=&dArt=&dArm=&dFig=&dBom=&dTra=&dSub=1&dDes=1&dCru=&dCar=&dBat=1&ddBat=&ool_att=Bat-Inf-Art-AArt-Arm-Sub-SSub-Des-JFig-Cru-Fig-Bom-HBom-Car-dBat-Tra&ool_def=Bat-Inf-Art-AArt-Arm-Sub-Bom-HBom-SSub-Des-Car-Cru-Fig-JFig-dBat-Tra&battle=Run&rounds=&reps=10000&luck=pure&ruleset=AA1942&territory=&round=1&pbem=

I get around 98%.

http://calc.axisandallies.org/?mustland=0&abortratio=0&saveunits=0&strafeunits=0&aInf=&aArt=&aArm=&aFig=2&aBom=&aTra=&aSub=2&aDes=&aCru=1&aCar=&aBat=&adBat=&dInf=&dArt=&dArm=&dFig=&dBom=&dTra=&dSub=1&dDes=1&dCru=&dCar=&dBat=1&ddBat=&ool_att=Bat-Inf-Art-AArt-Arm-Sub-SSub-Des-JFig-Cru-Fig-Bom-HBom-Car-dBat-Tra&ool_def=Bat-Inf-Art-AArt-Arm-Sub-Bom-HBom-SSub-Des-Car-Cru-Fig-JFig-dBat-Tra&battle=Run&rounds=&reps=10000&luck=pure&ruleset=AA1942&territory=&round=1&pbem=

A bit less than 92%.

Ignoring questions like what if USSR sub submerges for simplicity (which does not hurt the counter-argument, as it is sufficient to demonstrate one counterexample) - we know that aacalc has rounding errors. But using the above, 40% of the time Germany has 2 subs and a cruiser or more surviving, 60% less.

We know the UK cruiser survived, why? Because we’re talking about ranked games that use the LHTR setup. It’s said that 5 German fighters are stacked in reach of the UK sea zone, which means the fighter starting on Germany didn’t attack the UK cruiser. We also know no German submarine in the Atlantic attacked the UK cruiser. The assumption here is that USSR captured the Ukraine, which we could say bears closer examination, but I don’t think MarineIguana/BostonNWO would disagree, because he favors the 9 units to Ukraine / capture Ukraine opening, is that not correct? Well, if it becomes a point, we can address it then.

So we know the likely scenario is UK can hit German defenders of 1 submarine 1 cruiser with destroyer from East Canada, cruiser from Mediterranean, and two fighters. Even if you say Germany had two submarines, it’s still a reasonable attack. This still leaves the UK bomber free to hit Germany’s Med fleet on round 1.

But also, why will UK feel strong pressure to use the bomber to trade sz7? Yes, the Allies want to chase the Germans out of the Atlantic, but UK can do a fleet dump on UK3 followed by US reinforcement on US3. That’s assuming Germany doesn’t shift off threatening the UK sea zones on G2. On the other hand, UK is the only one in position to do anything about early German incursions in Africa. You get German income in Africa, that has to be rooted out, and it’s a lot of trouble if Japan is competent. I would say the pressure is on UK to blow up the German Med fleet, that’s why the UK hits the Med fleet at all. If some players don’t, that’s on them.

So you get two reasonable battles for UK at Mediterranean (2 fighters 1 bomber vs German battleship) and another (likely) northwest of UK at sea zone 7 (destroyer, cruiser, two fighters vs sub/cruiser, or optionally 2 sub/cruiser, or you could argue for 3 subs if so inclined. Are those unreasonable battles? Is that not what is indicated?

Are there tradeoffs? Sure. I think it’s more compelling that UK fighters then can’t land on West Russia. But suffice to say it’s not so much that surviving German units in sz7 make it difficult to create a navy along with 5 German fighters, because the German units in sz7 don’t survive, right?

Unless MarineIguana’s talking about pressuring against a UK1 build? I’m perfectly willing to accept that as I think it makes sense, except the details, once worked out, argue against Germany sending everything to SZ 7.

But before starting on that, a brief recap. I’ve explained that Germany sending everything to sz 7 isn’t necessarily a good “brute force” that pre-empts any reasonable UK response. Also, I’ve explained that just about nothing can stop a UK3/US3 fleet drop timing. I’m not saying UK3/US3 is great or optimal, it’s slower than one likes and if one can get away with doing things faster then you definitely do it. But if the Axis do some high pressure options, then UK3/US3 meets most answers, except the ones that pretty much mean the Axis didn’t buy ground, which is another thing entirely. Which I’m fine with addressing, maybe in another thread.

So I’m saying already there’s reason to think twice about Germany sending everything to sz7. Which is without even discussing the points of German fighter placement, because there is going to be a difference between placing fighters on Finland, NW Europe, and France; if you bulk or split, each has its own scenarios.

But then, maybe some players start talking about the edge cases. In which case, there’s even more reason for Germany not to send everything to sz7. Because once you’re arguing on the basis of Germany can possibly get great gains, you have to look at the probability of a proposed action’s getting those gains, as opposed to the probability of a proposed alternative action getting different gains, then you compare the two. If an alternative action is more likely to succeed and has higher payoffs, then that is reasonable risk. Make sense?

So let’s say UK tries to wipe out Germanys sz7 fleet and doesn’t do great - loses a fighter. Not great. Fighters are expensive. If Germany put 5 fighters in range of UK’s sea zones then it can blow up UK’s fleet, right? But no. Because UK can simply opt not to build any naval units, saving it for UK2. And again, this ignores the scenario where UK doesn’t lose any fighters, which is reasonably likely. This is sort of like, UK decides to be super antsy, then decides not to build a navy to challenge Germany’s air force in the first place, which it very well might because if Germany trades off its air against a UK fleet with no transports then it’s Germany bleeding out its stacks against UK, which is what UK/US want to do anyways. But again, we’re projecting that UK is antsy.

So let’s say UK doesn’t build a fleet. What does Germany gain? Finland/Norway for a turn. Maybe two. But that’s all.

Which isn’t bad, sure. Not bad at all.

But think about the chain of assumptions that led to this point. Germany gets lucky in sz7. UK then gets unlucky in sz7 and/or is afraid to grab the bull by the horns. I don’t know that I would assign fantastic odds to this line.

Contrast to what happens if Germany splits a sub off to hit the East Canada fleet. 1/3 chance to destroy the UK destroyer, 1/3 chance to destroy both UK destroyer and transport, 1/3 chance fail. Plus risk of German fighter, but follow along.

Suppose Germany gets lucky at East Canada’s sea zone. 1/3 chance. Compare to the sequence of events needed in the other scenario. I think I would perhaps prefer 1/3.

Then what happens if Germany does get lucky? Germany doesn’t need to defend France or NW Europe at all. So Germany can shift all its units east. And that’s going to be perhaps two or three mobilized units that are going east of Berlin instead of west.

But Germany can just drop AA guns and fighters to defend? UK can hit France and NW Europe with infantry, tank, two fighters, and bomber. If the Allies KGF, Germany will want its AA guns later, and those things are not cheap. But more, Germany always wants its fighters. Leaving German air without ground units helping on defense, even with AA, is a risky proposition. It’s not great if Germany retains its Med fleet, but normally UK doesn’t get a chance to pick off German air either. It’s not the worst.

So already you’re looking at a much better payout. 6 IPCs in the bank (at best), versus two to three mobilized units saving two turns worth of movement and still getting the 6 IPC with the latter. You just have better opportunities for early pressure, it’s so much better.

What if Germany doesn’t get so lucky? 2/3 chance to blow up the UK destroyer; if that happens the Allies have no way to destroy any German submarines at sz 7 that survive the battle if they simply submerge.

So which scenario really favors German survivors in the aftermath of sz7 attack then counter? A better attack, followed by a much stronger counter? Or a weaker attack, followed by a nonexistent counter?

Then too, I’m obliged to Baron Munchausen for his comments in the 1942 Second Edition forum about thinking about taking submarines as casualties after cruisers.

Do I disagree about execution and taking unnecessary risk? Of course not. It’s axiomatic, like “you want to take a lot of unnecessary chances? of course not!” But exactly what is “unnecessary” is, I think rather more of a discussion.

But returning to the point, some players say something works for them, that’s great. They’re sincerely trying to be helpful. But players that experience issues think they are already playing correctly. Telling them to not take unnecessary risks just don’t compute, because they don’t think they are taking unnecessary risks. Giving them a list of specific moves doesn’t work either, because after they do those moves, their game falls apart on the details elsewhere.

I think in the end, the player has to be responsible for seeking out answers if they want them. They have to put in the time if they want their answers. If others are willing to help, that’s great, but others can only do so much.

Returning to the OP, though, I’m not saying everything is the responsibility of the player. There’s a difference between being frustrated by gameplay, and having legitimate concerns over product features.

@nosho said in New Season, has there been any change to dice in ranked games?:

@brian-cannon Yes. I feel it should be done, unless there are juicier targets out there (Chinese fighter undefended, UK fleet spread out, etc)

Doing pearl or not is a reasonable point of disagreement. I’ve shifted my thinking from generally yes to generally no.

My motivation:

1. USA pacific units start really out of position. If going KGF, they’re 4 turns away from position.
2. Japan by doing Pearl, places 5 units out of position for a volatile battle moderate profit. These units are important for the India round 3 timing.
3. Japan has a formidable starting naval position that USA has to overcome whether of not Pearl Harbor is done.